Delicious Grain Free Baking Failure

Let's be honest: Grain is delicious. I love grain. Fried Rice, Corn chips, Bread, Pasta, Biscuits, everything inside and around every Burrito I've ever loved. Grains are everywhere and in everything. Everything pre-made. Just about everything you can "whip up" on the cheap. Try finding a grain-free, vegetarian microwavable entree. Not just gluten-free - GRAIN free. Paleo adherents have their meat. Vegans have pasta, polenta, and rice. Grain-free vegetarians have most of the produce aisle and the dairy case. Thank heavens for pastured eggs and the total lack of convicting conscience about cheese, or I seriously think I would have chewed my arm off a long time ago.

Anyhoooo, when people ask me how the grain-free thing is going, I usually say something like "It's hard, and I cheat a lot". Which is true. I do. I have polenta one night, veggie gyoza the next, just a "handful" of chips with the guac. Just "half a spoon" of rice in my Chipotle burrito bowl. I've turned down cookies, bagels, bread, pasta, and cake almost every time I've been tempted by it. I've tried to scoot by with nibbles and cheats.

But you know what?

I FEEL CRAPPY EVERY SINGLE TIME. Tired, achy, broken-out, creaky-jointed, bloated and overall gross. Every time. I keep telling myself that this bite will be the last one, but it hasn't held yet.

Until maybe today.

It just so happens that my dear Hubs has gotten on a baking kick. And out of the blue, he decided to start baking bread and to try to perfect Challah. What? Only my favorite kind of bread in the history of bread thankyouverymuch. Not only that, but his first loaf (of bread, ever) turned out like this:

Perfect. Golden brown on top, beautiful butter yellow on the inside, and that marvelous doughy goodness that lets you tear hunks off with your hands and eat them all carnivorously.

And I ate some. And I felt crappy.

Undeterred, I ate another steaming slab of the second loaf he baked last night, complete with butter dripping warm from the crusty fringe. And then I ate another. And then I felt, SURPRISE!, really disgusting for the rest of the night and most of today.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There is hope.

Thanks to a review in my dear Whole Living magazine, I made an Amazon impulse buy a few weeks ago and brought this little beauty into my life:

La Tartine Gourmande - Recipes for an Inspired Life by Beatrice Peltre. Friends, this is a beautifully photographed, delightfully written cookbook that just might change my life. Not only are most of the dozens of recipes vegetarian, they are ALSO mostly grain-free. A vegetarian, grain-free French cookbook. Be still my heart.

I have taken this book into bed with me to read while I fall asleep. I read the recipes with a glimmer of wonder and excitement. I mapped out a plan to bake something. Something savory and biscuit-like. I choose these delightful Cumin and Parsley-Flavored Cheese Gougeres:

Oh. Yum.

They are made with Quinoa flour, which turns out to be hella spendy. So I turn to my mega-bag of plain old quinoa from CostCo (We pretty much live in the suburbs now, so we shop at Mega Marts. I choose not to feel bad about this).

A few pulses in the coffee/spice grinder....

And viola! Quinoa flour:

Ok, so technically the recipe does have a little corn starch in it. But Geez Oh Pete! Try finding anything that even slightly resembles a biscuit that does not have any grain of any kind. I dare you.

After a pretty simple set of mixing, pouring, and piping steps and a mere 20 minutes in the oven, I pulled out these little babies:

Notice their distinct lack of "Puff". Hmm. Well, they smelled pretty awesome, and tasted like a digestible dream. And do you know the best part about mynewbestfriend French cookbook? It recommends you eat your Gougeres warm out of the oven with a glass of Champagne:

In fact, I'm noshing some un-puffs and sipping some sparkling white wine from good ole' Trader Jacques' right now.

There may be hope for this food deal yet.